


Separate Ways, Worlds Apart

by cosmotronic



Series: Journeys [5]
Category: Ghostbusters (2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/F, Holtzbert Week, Non-Explicit Sex, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-13
Updated: 2017-07-13
Packaged: 2018-12-01 18:12:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,914
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11491887
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cosmotronic/pseuds/cosmotronic
Summary: “Do you ever wonder what our lives would be like if we’d never met?”“Mm. Far less sex.”Holtzbert Week Day Five.





	Separate Ways, Worlds Apart

**Author's Note:**

> Day five in an Alternate Universe. Sort of.

 

“Holtz?”

“Mm?”

“Do you ever wonder what our lives would be like if we’d never met?”

“Mm. Far less sex.”

“I mean, if the Ghostbusters never got together?”

“I think we'd be bunked up in some layer of hell right now, Erin. End of the world and all that.”

“Aside from that.”

“Sometimes I do. Yeah.”

 

* * *

 

She stares at the screen, at the email. Checks the headers to be sure, the return address. Googles the sender's name, just in case.

Yep. CERN.

The foremost scientific research centre in the world wants her. Out of the seven billion people on the planet they think she, specifically, can do something for them. They think that she, with her weirdness and her recklessness and her complete disregard for lab notes, could do something to push the boundaries of nuclear physics and change the world.

It’s a giant cosmic joke, she is sure, but it’s an intriguing possibility. She could go tomorrow; there's nothing holding her here, no job, no family worth the name.

Doctor Gorin, she would miss Doctor Gorin of course. But Doctor Gorin would tell her to stop being a slave to her emotions and to go to Switzerland and be her brilliant self amongst the elite. Be fearless and show them all what she can do with an idea and a will and find that damn exotic particle.

And if they don’t like her methods, screw them all.

She won’t be leaving any friends behind, no love life to speak of. She flirts and charms her way into willing arms, occasionally into warm beds, but it's a comfort and a release valve more than a sink for her feelings. She doesn't actually know if she's capable of experiencing anything as intense as love. Her heart’s certainly never done that curious thing they all talk about in the movies.

She doesn’t mind being alone. She’s known nothing else. So she goes to Switzerland.

She lives for the idea and the will and the thrill of the search, the exotic particle her grail in all it’s splendour. Throws herself into the work and doesn’t look up, doesn’t stop to breathe, becomes it.

She’s at a conference in Berlin when she looks up for the first time in months and breathes for the first time in years. She sees her. She’d like to say their eyes met across a crowded room and their hearts hammered to a singular beat and the world slowed to a crawl until they were the only two people left in creation.

 

* * *

 

“Soulmates? That's highly improbable, Holtz.”

“Nope. Serendipity. Not impossible, my dear. Let me finish.”

 

* * *

 

She sees her, only it’s as an outsider looking in.

The woman is beautiful, in a slightly beaten-down way. Her hair is styled in a manner that takes the life from it, but it is red and lovely and thick with potential. Her clothes are stuffy and make her look older, though they cover a long, lean frame of hidden curves and possibilities.

There’s laughter lines on her face that speak of happy times and her eyes are quick and sharp with intelligence, but there’s a weariness when she looks about her. A resignation when she scans the room, smiles at her colleagues, at the man who hovers at her shoulder and curls his hand about her elbow to direct her.

She thinks the woman should flinch, but instead she sighs and leans into the touch.

 

* * *

 

“Really? I’d settle for that?”

“You'd get lonely.”

“I don't ever want to settle for less than you.”

“You won't have to.”

 

* * *

 

She approaches the woman, much later, after several aborted attempts that end in rapid detours to the bar to calm her nerves. She doesn’t know why she’s so anxious or why her introduction to this woman, this stranger, should matter so much.

The man isn’t with her, now. He had been a keynote speaker that morning, but it was the woman’s lecture on conjugation-parity violation that had captivated her so much. Beautiful and brilliantly complex and yet drawn with a simple elegance. She could imagine taking this woman’s words, her ideas, and making them her will.

She eventually stands before the woman, drink in her hand and ever so slightly on the wrong side of sober. The woman looks at her curiously, and it’s a look she’s used to getting; she’s wearing her yellow lenses, her hair is piled up messily and although she’s made an effort to be a little more conforming with her wardrobe today, it’s still an eclectic bouquet of style.

The woman’s mouth quirks, and she feels her heart do something very peculiar.

 

* * *

 

“Love at first sight, I suppose.”

“I think it always was. Or something like that.”

“Something like that. I love you, Jill.”

“Mm. Love you too, E.”

 

* * *

 

They talk for hours, about science and how will and ideas can shape the world. They talk about preferred drinks, first, then about favourite foods and places and movies and songs, and about New York and taxi drivers and that one time they were both at a Gloria Estefan show, probably only a few yards apart, and they never knew it.

The woman’s name is Erin, and she is a little older than herself, and she teaches particle physics at Columbia University, and she likes the man a little but not a lot, and when she is on her third glass of red wine the woman tells a story of how a child once saw a ghost.

That’s very interesting, she thinks. And the flicker of old hurt, old fear shadowed in deep ocean blue, sends a matching pang of sadness to her chest.

And she tells the woman bits and pieces of herself, about her life and her search, and about the willing arms and warm beds, and about her many homes and those who tried and failed and those who didn’t try and why she is Holtz, now.

Before she knows it, it is late, and the hotel bar is all but empty.

They accompany each other in the elevator. Her floor lights up first and she sighs, pushes herself off the wall of the car. The sliding doors open and reality beckons, a cold empty corridor and a cold empty room and a cold empty bed.

She turns back to the brief warm radiance beside her and says something like a goodnight, a goodbye. An _auf wiedersehen_ that makes her ache because she knows it is a lie.

The touch on her hand makes her pause and the look on the beautiful face inches from hers makes her forget. She forgets everything, the search that has become her purpose and the exotic particle that has claimed her soul. She forgets the loneliness.

And it was loneliness, she realises now. And it’s loneliness and something else she sees in the abyssal blue staring into her own eyes, searching her face, looking for a clue.

A yes or a no that will shape their tomorrow, all their tomorrows.

She nods, yes, and they curve together as they stumble from the elevator.

She doesn’t ask where the man is, whether he will come searching, what he will think. The choice has been made.

The woman’s lips – Erin’s lips – are on hers, harsh and soft, tongue pressing into her mouth to dance a dangerous liaison. Their hands are as confessions for the other, rough and tender on shoulders, on hips, on the curve of a behind. She can’t help the moans that drop from her, to be caught and imprisoned in another kiss, and another.

Her back is flat against the door of her hotel room; somehow they managed to make it inside that small haven of privacy. Erin is a bold woman even on her knees, wastes no time fumbling at her belt and tugging her pants down, her underwear down to the floor.

She’s wet already, and Erin knows it. Leans close and breathes, hot air in and out across her skin. Presses lips to swollen flesh and it’s as though all of her being is centred on the nerves between her legs.

She gasps, and her bare legs tremble, and she bites back a name because she doesn’t yet know if names are like prayers to be breathed so freely.

A clever tongue traces letters and words over her and there’s not a name writ there either but it might just be a supplication.

There’s a warm hand creeping up her thigh, fingers walking and tickling and she groans in anticipation because she’s seen those clever fingers, so long and strong and wrapped tight around a wine glass, then caressing so gently over her own hand. She knows what that touch will feel like pressed intimately against her, inside her.

She tangles her hand in that proper hair, glances down at the image of those dull clothes, this sad and desperately perfect woman on her knees for weak and messy her.

And her heart does something else right then.

 

* * *

 

“Holtz…”

“Shh.”

 

* * *

 

She gently pulls Erin away, tugs her up to meet her. There’s a clamour in her chest, an ache in her core, but it shouldn’t be like this.

Not hot and frantic and a blissful quick togetherness, not just a means to forgetfulness. It’s a pleasing notion, but she suddenly knows tomorrow will be cold and empty again if they do this, like this.

Instead she leads them to her unmade hotel bed, kissing away the question on Erin’s parted lips.

She pulls the rest of her clothes off, stands naked and simple and shows Erin everything, offers Erin what lies beneath the pale skin and soft edges and rough blemishes.

Wants Erin to want her _everything_ and as she stands and vibrates with her nerves, she dares to believe that maybe Erin could.

Touches Erin’s shoulder and whispers a plea and the little lines on the sweet face before her form into a smile and soon they are naked together, close but not touching.

She removes her yellow glasses for the first time, so Erin’s vibrance can be seen and not just imagined.

They lie together, in her rumpled sheets, and they sigh together and talk for a time, and they share kisses and tiny touches. They speak of all the things they spoke of before, and more, and more, until the birds join their soft verse with their chattering chorus.

And she makes Erin giggle, and Erin makes her grin. And they cry a little too, just a melancholy answer to a cruel universe.

They talk about a future, maybe. It will be difficult and the earth throws up barriers beyond reckoning, but they talk about it anyway.

They do make love, later. Erin underneath her, gasping her name into the pale dawn as she sobs Erin’s name into the warm crook of a shoulder. They come together quick and blissful, enraptured in the moment even, but it’s not a means to forget. It is a promise, a taste of tomorrow.

She goes back to Switzerland.

She still pursues the idea and hammers her will against the boundaries of science. Still wonders after the exotic particle and still knows the thrill of the search, but it’s not the same grail her lips yearn for.

Her phone sings a tone, every day at six, and her heart does something extraordinary.

 

* * *

 

“Do you really think we’d find each other like that?”

“I think in any world, we would.”

“Jillian Holtzmann.”

“Mm?”

“C’mere.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> You know, I'll be sad when this week is over.
> 
> Comfort me on [tumblr](https://cosmotronic87.tumblr.com/). I also like ice cream.


End file.
